The Why? Question

Why? Why in the world would you – give up a paycheck, career, time, energy, friends for an uncertainty – a belief, a hunch, a quest that an idea, a conceptual product, just might succeed – and that you are going to be THE lucky one to execute business formation, build a team, educate a market, distribute and sell a product, secure partners, raise money all on time exactly when the market demands it – even if the market has no idea that it even needs your product? Why would you do that?

Intellectual Honesty.

Many early stage entrepreneurs never answer this most basic question. And it gets them in trouble. Being honest with yourself is the first step in entrepreneurial success. If you can’t be honest with yourself – how can you be honest with anyone else?

Intellectual honesty demands that you acknowledge that the chances of success are long (95% of all early stage businesses fail). Intellectual honesty means that you acknowledge that if you are thinking about incremental innovation, someone else, somewhere is likely to as well – you are not the only one with a claim on “the truth” and “market insight”.

Intellectually honesty requires that you answer: Are you running towards something – a higher purpose – or away from something – a dissatisfactory first career? Do you really think that entrepreneurs financially succeed – and you could be one of them – if only you had control? (Financial success happens rarely).

An honest self-examination might mean that you simply admit that you are on a mission of self – discovery, and that you really don’t know why you are compelled to be an entrepreneur. At least that is an honest answer.

 My story.

When I decided to give up a first career – the practice of law in Naples, Florida – to “do” a technology start-up called Neighborhood America, my motivation was a little of both. I passionately believed that the Internet was going to be a business medium (1998), and even more passionately, that it would one day enable people to meaningfully participate in their governance. I also passionately understood and believed that when government processes work better – business is more efficient.

But I was also moving away from something – a first career in law that I had invested thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars in. Though successful, I was unfulfilled – the law often being a never ending zone of conflict, confrontation and manipulation of arbitrary man-made rules. It wasn’t for me. The fact that you are good at doing something doesn’t mean that you should be doing it.

Making that choice took me down an uncertain difficult path – a 14 year journey. But along the way, it enabled an experience with game changing social projects that made a difference in both government and business – building global communities for the World Trade Center (Imagine New York), Statue of Liberty, Flight 93, major media, and some of the largest B2B communities then on the Web. It also exposed me to some of the finest teams and people in the world. It gave me an entrepreneurial and business education that I could not have imagined.

Why you? – Why you as an entrepreneur?

Before business plans are written, products are conceptualized, and financing is secured – your first step to being the humble entrepreneur is to be intellectually honest with yourself. Why are you taking an entrepreneurial journey?